BHG Centsational Style

Fabric is one of the easiest ways to refresh a room and reflect your personality inside your home. Fabrics bring beautiful pattern indoors, add interesting texture, soft comfort, and instantly establish the mood of a space. Here are ten tips for decorating with textiles around the home!

1. A no fail way to decorate with fabric is to stick with one color and layer it around the room, like the shams, bed skirt, and complementary block print style paisley duvet in this serene green bedroom space.

2. Solid color fabrics are an easy choice for bringing softness and color to your home. Opt for accessories in the form of pillows and an area rug in the same hue to pull the look together.

3. If you love a bold pattern but don’t want it to overwhelm, then use it smaller doses like these breakfast nook chairs.

4. Colors that sit next to each other on the color wheel share undertones and naturally make a good pair like these blues and greens. Layer florals, geometrics, solids, or stripes in the same dynamic duo.

5. Mixing large and small scale patterns from same color palette creates a harmonizing medley. Many textile designers create their collections with this very idea in mind.

6. Let a bold patterned textile determine the palette of a space and pull other solid colors from that fabric to use around the room.

7. Keep the space light and bright with plenty of white and let snazzy modern pillows introduce color and pattern to the room.

8. Sticking with neutrals makes it easy to layer soft colors on top of one another like these shades of tan, taupe, charcoal, and blue. Start with solid furnishings then add a pillows which possess the underlying neutral colorway in their pattern.

9. Choose a statement fabric for your window panels then be bold! Use that intense hue from the chosen pattern in furnishings and repeat it on the walls.

10. Think outside the box when looking for patterns to use around your home. Vintage fabrics, store bought tablecloths, or even clothing can be reinvented to suit your purpose like this grain sack upholstered headboard.

Most importantly, make it fun! Mix several favorites to suit your style, and reflect your personality and love of color and texture. On the hunt for some fresh fabrics for your home? This list of online home decor fabrics will get you started!

Hi, Kate,
Thanks for the wonderful ideas and photos. I have a dilemma, and I thought you might be interested in writing about it sometime as surely it might be common.
We have pine/wood walls and hardwood floors, so it’s a lot of brown. Plus, I was crazy and bought a brown leather sofa! We built the house 11 years ago, and this brown, brown world drives me nuts. Plus we have a stone fireplace which goes about 15ft high. I currently have off white curtains.
Decorating articles almost always feature white or light walls. I would love to see a feature with wood paneled walls . Oh ….I would whitewash these walls but my dear hubby will not have it.:)
Thanks, Kate,Dara

July 3, 2012 at
1:49 pm , by
Kate

Hi Dara, that’s a common plight! I think you’re on the right track, pulling in lots of white to balance out the wood tones. You could slipcover your sofa too, that might help, or at least cover it with lighter pillows and throws. You can also fill the paneled walls with white frames filled with your favorite art, photographs or prints too!
Kate

Great ideas and inspiration… I like that you mention thinking outside the box for different fabric options. I decorate my house on a dime by buying bundles of fabric yardage or scrap at the thrift store, and my go to for new curtains is buying thrift store flat sheets for a buck or two. Sometimes there’s great patterns and I usually keep several white flat sheets around and dye, applique, or modify them into whatever my heart desires.

Thank you Kate! Fabulous ideas and beautiful rooms. As a former ‘color consultant’, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a color theory type post but my challenge is finding rooms to highlight that fit the bill. It’s super time consuming! Did you source your pics from BHG? I’ve been looking on Pinterest and thus far have only 2. :(. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

And Dara, we must be long lost sisters! I did the EXACT same thing in our log cabin and I’m currently ‘whitening’ up the space. Live and learn as they say.

July 20, 2012 at
2:05 pm , by
Sue

Fabulous ideas!
I love the cushions in Pix 7. Where might I find those?

Thanks

July 23, 2012 at
3:44 pm , by
Kate

Hi Doreen, all images come from the BH&G archives, click on the pic to be directed to them! Pinterest is a good source but only if they are labeled correctly, I’ve been collecting color inspiration images over the months in my own gallery dedicated to the topic (images from various sources)http://pinterest.com/centsationalgrl/color-inspiration/
Kate

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About Centsational Style

Hello and welcome to Centsational Style! I’m Kate from Northern California, bargain hunter, design lover, and incurable DIYer. Right here you’ll find features in great design and interior decorating coupled with fresh and inspiring ideas for sprucing up your home one project at a time. Learn More